“He is,” said Mr. Uskins suddenly.
Pazel started; he had almost forgotten that Uskins was in the room.
Alyash, flustered, carried on: “-then we know he’s toiling away in a fever, trying to learn how to use it.”
“And failing, so far,” said Haddismal. Turning Thasha a skeptical look, he added, “You expect us to believe that you did something that mucking sorcerer won’t even try?”
“I touched the Stone,” Thasha stated flatly, “once.”
“Just reached up and gave it a squeeze,” scoffed Haddismal. “On a whim, like. The deadliest blary thing in Alifros.”
“If I hadn’t we’d have died anyway,” said Thasha.
“Do it again,” said Taliktrum.
Uproar, loud and general. Taliktrum and Myett leaped straight up from the Shaggat onto a crossbeam above. Every human voice (and two dlomic) in the chamber cried out against the notion, and Jorl and Suzyt erupted in howls. Pazel squeezed Thasha’s elbow. No, no, no, his shaking head proclaimed.
“You’ll shatter the arm!” shouted Alyash.
“Be quiet!” Thasha bellowed, and everyone obeyed. Thasha handed the dog’s leashes to Pazel. Then she walked right up to the Shaggat Ness, raised a hand and touched the statue’s arm, spreading her fingers wide.
“Thasha, don’t!” hissed Pazel.
Thasha closed her eyes, tracing the stone bicep, sliding her fingers around and upward in what was almost a caress. She reached the elbow, lingered there, then moved her hand slowly higher.
“I could,” she said, and as she spoke Pazel thought the manger darkened, and a cold, prickling sensation swept over his body. The men looked at one another, aghast. Thasha reached higher still, until her fingers rested atop the Shaggat’s own, with the throbbing blackness of the Nilstone lancing between them. “I could take it from his hand, right here and now. But what would be the point?”
She dropped her hand, and a sigh of relief passed through the room. Pazel felt light-headed, as though he had just caught his balance at the edge of a cliff. But Alyash gave a mirthless laugh.
“You’re lying through your pretty teeth,” he said to Thasha. “You know what the point would be. You could send Arunis flying from this ship like a cannonball. The rest of us, too. You could get your friends out of the crawly trap, whisk us home across the Nelluroq and be sittin’ down to tea and toast with Daddy by New Year’s Day. Pitfire, you could topple Magad the Fifth and take his place as Emperor of Arqual. The whole blary game’s up if someone masters the Nilstone.”
“I never said I could master it,” said Thasha. “I’m no mage. I only told you I could claim it.”
“Do you mean to say that while you can survive the touch of the Stone, you’re unable to use it at all?” asked Taliktrum.
“I don’t know how long I’d survive, if I took it from him,” said Thasha. “I have a feeling it would kill me too, just a bit more slowly.”
“You see?” said Taliktrum, glancing quickly around the chamber. “She is in some sense mightier than Arunis, who fears to touch it at all. Why haven’t you applied yourself to its mastery? Have you no desire to help us?”
Thasha gave him a long, poisonous look. “If I survived the attempt,” she said, “I still couldn’t do anything with the Stone that isn’t ugly.”
“Ugly,” said Taliktrum. “What does that mean? War is ugly, girl. Killing, hunger, disease are ugly. You must risk it. We must be prepared to use every tool in our arsenal.”
Thasha turned and walked back to her friends. “Not this one,” she said.
“Taliktrum,” said Fiffengurt suddenly, “you want to play captain? Try acting the part. You said this meeting would be ‘brief and decisive,’ as I recall. Well, it ain’t been brief, and we’ve not decided a blessed thing.”
“That’s about to change,” said Haddismal.
Drawing his Turach broadsword, he stepped forward and thrust it at Taliktrum, the blade horizontal, in the ritual challenge of the Arquali military. “We can have this out right now,” he said. “You’re holdin’ hostages, our true captain among them. But there ain’t a man on this ship-or a woman either-who hasn’t stared down death these past few months. And whether you kill them or not, you’ll have doomed yourselves. We’ll smoke you out of your holes and deal with you the Arquali way, and your people will die cursing the day they ever heard the name Tliktrum-Talakitrim-”
“Taliktrum, you great oaf,” muttered Bolutu.
“Withhold the berries, my lord,” said Myett. “See how fierce they are when their people feel the claws of the poison ripping at their lungs.”
Alyash drew his sword in turn. “You think you’ve got us by the gills, don’t you?” he said.
Taliktrum nodded. “Exactly right, Bosun: we have you by the gills. My father, Lord Talag, is never careless with detail, and he planned this campaign for twelve years.”
“And the Secret Fist planned for forty,” said Haddismal. “You have no muckin’ idea who you’re dealin’ with. The water emergency’s over, crawly, and so’s your little game. We’ll drop this ship to the seabed before we let ourselves be run by ship lice.”
“Leave bigotry to one side, all of you,” said Hercol. “It will not achieve the ends you want. We are all thinking creatures, and each of us bears a soul.” His voice was strained, as though he was making a great effort to heed his own words. Facing Taliktrum, he said, “I will never address you as ‘captain’ or ‘commander,’ for you have no right to either title. But your own people count you a lord, and so shall I for the present.
“Lord Taliktrum, your prisoners are in squalor. Thirty days they have been crammed in that space. They are filthy, sore and maddened by inactivity. They sleep poorly and eat little better. You showed a moment’s kindness when we first spotted land: you gave a temporary antidote to the captain, and let him walk free an hour upon the quarterdeck. Will you not extend that kindness to the others? Let one or two out at a time, to breathe the free air, wash themselves, regain their dignity, if only for an hour.”
Shouts of agreement from the humans. Taliktrum crossed his arms and waited for silence.
“Cages are abhorrent to our people,” he said. “You giants made sure we learned to hate them to our core. And unlike you we are not needlessly cruel. Besides, the antidote is flawless. What have we to lose? Three, yes, three hostages at a time will have their hour’s freedom. The women first, and the youngest.”
Pazel felt his heart lift. He caught Thasha’s eye and saw the same excitement. The youngest hostages were Neeps and Marila.
Hercol bowed ever so slightly to Taliktrum. “Now to another matter,” he said. “We cannot stay here, Lord Taliktrum. The Chathrand is hidden behind a rocky islet barely taller than her mainmast, and that is not safety enough. If the armada had passed a few miles closer to the village, we might all be in prison now, or worse.”
“I know that,” said Taliktrum. “Of course we must sail. The question is, where?”
“And before that, the question’s how,” said Fiffengurt. “As in, how far can we get? We have water but precious little food. The rats fouled most of the grain in the hold, and devoured everything in the smokehouse, and ate through the tin walls of the bread room. And all the animals are dead.”
“You lie,” shouted a voice from among the ixchel standing on the hay bales. “I heard a goat bleating on the orlop deck this morning, m’lord, as plain as I hear you now.”
“Can’t be,” said Big Skip, shaking his head. “Teggatz and I did the inventory. There are carcasses we couldn’t account for, true enough. But they must have been burned to cinders, or else hurled themselves over the sides. There’s no blessed way we missed a goat.”
“Goat or no goat, we’ll soon be hungry,” said Pazel.
“That’s right, Muketch,” said Haddismal, “and without decent food the men won’t be fit to fight, should it come to that.”
“We lack medical supplies as well,” said Fulbreech.
“And the ship needs repai
rs,” said Fiffengurt. “That foremast is only a jury-rig-one more hard blow and she’ll fall. And probably take the kevels and the chase-beams with her. The gun carriages want attention, too.”
Suddenly Uskins giggled, loud and shrill. “Fit to fight!” he said. “Who do you think to fight, Sergeant Haddismal? That armada, maybe? What odds would you give them, eh, crawlies? Let’s wager, let’s have a little fun-”
Taliktrum’s finger stabbed down at Uskins. “That buffoon should not have been admitted. Who brought him?”
Uskins lowered his voice. “No one brought me, Lord Taliktrum. I merely followed my friends.”
Now it was Alyash’s turn to laugh. “What blary friends?”
Uskins’ mouth twisted, but he made no reply.
“Quarreling imbeciles!” said Taliktrum. “Your race truly is a misstep on the part of nature. By the sun and stars, act like men! Where is the sorcerer? When can we expect his next attack?”
The argument exploded again. Haddismal pointed out that Arunis’ last attack had only occurred after the ixchel drugged every human aboard. The ixchel fired back that drugged sleep was kinder than what giants had meted out to their people for five hundred years. Jeers and insults flew. When order at last returned, however, it was clear that no one knew where Arunis was hiding.
“I will say this,” said Bolutu. “He will not wait long. The South is changed, and powers have arisen that were not here… before. Arunis will not risk his prize being snatched by some mage or ruler mightier than himself.”
“What can he do, though?” asked Big Skip. “If he could use the Stone, he’d have come for it already, wouldn’t he?”
“Let him try,” said Haddismal, and his men rumbled in agreement.
“You speak in ignorance,” said Hercol. “The mage is three thousand years old. He has survived cataclysms beyond anything we have experienced. Do you think he will let himself be thwarted by a small company of marines? No, it is the Nilstone itself that thwarts him, for the present. And it is these two”-he indicated Pazel and Thasha-“who have best understood his tactics. How does one handle a poker heated in the furnace? With a glove, of course. That simple insight, when Thasha brought it to me, explained so much of the sorcerer’s efforts and schemes. This creature”-Hercol gestured at the Shaggat-“is his chosen glove. Arunis cares nothing for him or his deformed version of the Old Faith. He merely believes the Shaggat will serve his purpose.”
“Arqual’s purpose, too,” hissed Myett.
“Now, that just ain’t so,” said Haddismal. “The Emperor wants the downfall of the Mzithrin Kings, and he planned to use the Shaggat against them. That’s true, and well deserved, after all their crimes. But His Supremacy knew nothing about the Nilstone, or Arunis for that matter. He never meant things to come to such a pass.”
“Tell that to the survivors.”
Everyone turned. It was Lord Talag, Taliktrum’s father. He stood in the midst of the ixchel on the hay bales, leaning on the shoulder of a younger man. His thick gray hair was tied back in the style of elder ixchel, and his eyes blazed with fury. “Tell them!” he spat again. “The limbless, the eyeless, the orphaned, the mad. ‘Don’t blame Arqual. We never meant the Shaggat to do so well. We thought he would only sack a few cities, burn a few regions, exterminate a people or two. A brief civil war is all we had in mind-a war to break your will to fight us, when our fleets came in turn.’ Give them comfort, giant. Tell them how much better their lives will be under the Arquali heel.”
Pazel was alarmed. Since his abuse by the rats, Talag had been quiet and withdrawn. But here he was again in all his ferocity, Talag the mastermind, who had swept all his people up in his dream of a homecoming, who had exploited Ott’s war conspiracy as deftly as Arunis had. Here was the genius, the human-hater, Diadrelu’s brother and her twisted reflection. As much as anyone aboard, Talag had brought them to this moment. Was he recovered enough to lead the clan once more? And which was worse, the clear-eyed hatred of the father, or the hazy delusions of the son?
Talag began to cough; perhaps he was not so recovered after all. When the fit finally ended he shook his head. “In any case, your plans for the mad king have failed. The soul entombed in that statue will never breathe again, let alone reach his fanatics on Gurishal to lead them in a new holy war. The sorcerer may do all that you fear, if and when he comes for the Stone-but not with the aid of the Shaggat. My son has foreseen this, and much else that he has yet to reveal.”
Thasha looked at Pazel and rolled her eyes.
“Go to your rest, Father,” said Taliktrum. “Lehdra, Nasonnok, escort him.” Turning to the humans, he drew a deep breath. “In sum: you cannot locate Arunis, you have no idea what to do with the Nilstone, you do not know the first thing about the surrounding country or the armada that passed us, and you do not have a plan. Am I leaving anything out?”
“We’ve gold enough to buy a fair-sized realm,” said Haddismal. “We can hire the best curse-breakers this South has to offer. They’ll fix the Shaggat, if he can be fixed. And if we can pop that stone out of his hand without killing him.”
“Or yourselves,” said Taliktrum.
“And meanwhile,” put in Alyash, “we look for a place called Stath Balfyr. We have course headings from there, as you probably know. Headings for a safer, western return across the Nelluroq, behind the Mzithrini defenses, to the Shaggat’s homeland of Gurishal.”
“Y-ess,” said Taliktrum. “From Stath Balfyr. So I’ve been told.”
Pazel saw the sudden alertness in every ixchel’s face, and knew its source. Diadrelu had told Hercol everything, a few hours before her death. The ixchel had deceived the deceivers. The course headings were a fiction, the old documents that contained them forgeries. Stath Balfyr was real, but it was no starting point for a run across the Ruling Sea. It was the ixchel homeland, a country ruled by the little people, the land Talag had sworn they would return to and reclaim.
He’s not going to tell them, Pazel realized. He’s no fool: better that they should want to find Stath Balfyr than that he should have to drive them there with threats. Of course it may come to that in the end.
“Sirs?” said a thin voice from the edge of the chamber.
It was Ibjen, the dlomic boy.
Taliktrum looked at him dubiously. “You have something to add?”
“The armada, sirs,” said Ibjen, his voice shaking. “There was talk of it in the village. Just talk, you understand. We are simple folk-”
“You don’t have to convince us of that,” said Taliktrum. “Speak quickly, and be done.”
“Out here we have little to do with the Empire, sir,” said Ibjen, “and the news we do have comes by way of Masalym. When my father came out to the Sandwall, boats still made the crossing from the city every day or two, and soldiers would be billeted with the townsfolk, and speak of the Platazcra, the Infinite Conquest. But that was years ago. For a long time now we have been abandoned-that is why my mother chose to send me here.”
“You ramble, boy.”
Ibjen made an apologetic nod. “Sir, before your ship we had had no visitors in half a year. And the last visitor died of fever in just three days. We have no doctor, so my father and I tended him as best we could. He was not a man of Masalym. Some guessed that he came from Orbilesc, others from Calambri.”
“These names mean nothing to us,” said Taliktrum. “If you cannot get to the point-”
“Listen to him!” said Thasha. “He’s doing us a favor, being here.”
“And those words blary well do mean something-one of ’em at least,” added Fiffengurt. “ORBILESC is engraved on our blary sheet anchors, though the letters are faded now. I always wondered if it referred to her home port.” He gestured at Ibjen. “You carry on, lad. I say you’re mighty brave, to step aboard this ship.”
Ibjen did not look brave at that moment. “Orbilesc and Calambri are cities far to the west, in the heart of Bali Adro,” he said. “And it is true that the Empire’s greatest shipya
rds are there.” He looked at Thasha and swallowed. “My father sent me to the neighbors’ house when the stranger began to die. But last night he told me something he had never mentioned before. That the dying man had broken his silence before the end. That he’d said he came from a village on the banks of the River Sundral, near Orbilesc. He said that the whole of the city had been caught up in some huge, secret effort, for years. That Imperial warships turned away all private vessels at a distance of fifty miles, and that a strange glow hung over Orbilesc by night. Later the mountains began to shake, and boulders crashed down upon his village. The fell light grew stronger. And finally the river gushed with boiling water that killed every fish, every frog and snake and wading bird-even the trees whose roots drank from the stream. That, the man had claimed, was when he fled east.”
Ibjen gazed beseechingly at his listeners. “My father thought it but the ravings of a dying man. Until yesterday, that is. Now he believes that Orbilesc was building ships for the Emperor. The same ships that passed in the gulf, Thashiziq. The ships of the armada.”
There was a long pause; the men were too unsettled to speak. To Pazel’s surprise it was Big Skip who broke the silence.
“Right,” he said. “Fleet or no fleet, we have to sail before we starve. And it can’t be north across the Nelluroq, even if we wished to-”
“Which we do not,” said Haddismal, “until we reach Stath Balfyr, wherever that may be. This is an Arquali ship, and Magad’s word is law, even here on the far side of Alifros.”
“Glory to the Ametrine Throne,” said Alyash drily, “and if that ain’t motivation enough, there’s the small matter of him crucifying us, with our families, if we return to Arqual without completing the mission.”
Pazel kept his face expressionless. Magad’s done all the punishing he’s going to do, he thought.
“So,” said Big Skip, “turn east and we might catch up with that hellish armada; turn west and we might find the hellish place it came from. And either way we won’t get far before we’re too hungry to do our jobs. Ain’t it simple, then? We head due south-to this Masalym, thirty miles across the bay.”
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